The Equalizer (50 page)

“I'll get rid of it.”

“How was the funeral for Danil?”

“Respectful.”

That was as much as Sam could manage. He nodded and McCall let him rest, never letting go of his hand. Five long minutes passed. McCall waited. Then Sam opened his left eye again.

“Whatever's happening, it's going down tomorrow. That's what I heard. Whoever the intern was talking to is going out of town tomorrow. Some big deal. Best intel I can give you, McCall, for a dying old man.”

“You're not dying.”

“Aren't all of us dying?”

“When I want to have a deep, philosophical discussion, I'll play chess with Granny.”

“Don't do that. He cheats.”

“He doesn't have to. I'll check up on you later.”

“Who asked you?”

But there was a smile on Sam's face. He closed his good eye again. McCall sat still for another two minutes. Sam's breathing became rhythmic, and McCall knew he had slipped off to sleep. He let go of his hand, stood up, and walked out of the hospital room.

McCall walked up to the nurse's station. The nurse who'd entered the room was sitting behind it, on a computer. She looked up.

“He's sleeping,” McCall said. “Make sure no one else goes in there.”

“
You
shouldn't have been in there.”

“I know. Thanks for letting me see him.”

She didn't quite swoon, but her gaze softened to a glare.

McCall walked out of the ward, took the stairs down to the lobby, and walked out onto Seventy-seventh Street. He took Salam's hypodermic out of his pocket, smashed the needle on the top of a trash can, and dropped it in. He took out his iPhone and dialed a number he knew by heart.

Control picked up after one ring. “You could have talked to me at the funeral.”

“Sam Kinney. He's at the Lenox Hill Hospital on Seventy-seventh. There was an attempted robbery at Sam's hotel a couple of nights ago. He was shot.”

“Is he all right?”

“He's out of intensive care, but one of the robbers was in his hospital room this afternoon. Probably worried he could identify them. I chased him away.”

“Did you kill him?”

“If I'd killed him, I'd be talking to you from a police precinct. I just scared him off.”

“What's this about, Robert? You're both ex-Company agents. What do I need to know?”

“You don't need to know anything more than I'm telling you. Sam's life may be in danger. You need to move him and make sure no one knows where he is.”

“I can do that.”

“I'd consider it a favor,” McCall said.

“That's a two-way street.”

“I'm not coming back, I'm just reaching out.”

“I'll see that Sam's well looked after.”

“Thanks.”

McCall disconnected.

Almost immediately his cell phone rang.

“Yes, Brahms,” he said into the iPhone.

“It's Mary,” her light, refreshing voice said. “I just heard from Brahms. He'll be finished with his
treason
, as he calls it, by nine o'clock. Where can I meet you?”

“There's a Starbucks on Delancey Street at Orchard. I'll meet you there at nine-thirty.”

McCall disconnected.

*   *   *

Mary was waiting for him at the Starbucks on Delancey Street when he got there. It had long since stopped drizzling, but the outside tables were deserted except for the one at which Mary was sitting. She had on a very chic raincoat that looked like it was worth more than three months of McCall's apartment rent. He slid into the chair opposite her.

“Do you mind if we sit out here?” Mary asked. “It's packed inside and I get claustrophobic.”

“Out here is fine,” McCall said.

“How was the funeral?”

“Like all funerals. They need to happen, but they're for the living, not the departed. It was sad, but it's a gorgeous place. Danil will rest easy there.”

“Do you believe he's really there? Or is this earthly body like an old coat we throw off when we're not using it anymore? Isn't his spirit somewhere else?”

“It's a nice thought. Brahms couldn't come himself?”

“No. He had to go home. He told me this was very important to give to you.”

She took a small manila envelope out of her bag and handed it to him. He opened it and saw a thin black flash drive inside. He closed the envelope and dropped it into the pocket of his jacket. Mary took off her Diane von Furstenberg tortoiseshell glasses and looked down the street. McCall had never seen her without them. Her eyes were brown and gorgeous.

“He told me he shouldn't have done this for you.”

McCall nodded. “Treason.”

“He said he no longer owed you. I know you're going to say he never did, but
he
felt like he did, and Brahms is very passionate about what he believes.”

“Do you know his real name?”

She looked back at him and nodded. “He introduced himself to me as Brahms, when I came in for the job interview, and he's never told me. But bills come to the store sometimes addressed to Mr. Chaim Mendleman. I only think of him as Brahms. He said I should tell you, and I'm sure my Yiddish pronunciation is mangling this:
‘A legen ahf dir
.' He said it means: ‘You should live well and be well.'”

“Brahms has always been kind of a father figure to me, too, even though we're not that far apart in age.”

“You know his wife is very sick?”

McCall stared at her. “I didn't know that.”

Mary nodded. “Hilda,” she said, as if Brahms had had several wives. “Ovarian cancer. Stage two. She's a fighter, but it's really taking a toll on my boss.”

“Has he told you what the doctors are saying?”

“She's undergoing chemo. There's an experimental procedure she qualifies for at a Boston hospital, but it's a lot of money and Brahms can't afford it. His insurance only goes so far.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“He won't take that kind of charity from you. Or anyone.”

“Brahms has given a lot of himself. To his wife, to his family, to his country. Maybe it's time for someone to give back to him.”

“It would be nice.”

“I know he has a grown-up son and daughter.…”

“They call and they e-mail, but they live out of state and they're both very busy.” She smiled a tired smile. “I'm kind of the surrogate daughter right now.”

She stood up suddenly and offered her hand. McCall stood and shook hands. Her grip was firm and did not linger.

“I hope whatever is on that flash drive is worth all the trauma you put him through.”

“So do I. Thanks for bringing it. Is Brahms at home?”

“He's at the hospital with Hilda. He doesn't need to know we had this conversation. He'd be very mad at me. The other night he was merrily going through the last of the dry sherry and I was working late on the accounts with him. We schmoozed a lot.” She grinned. “He looked at me in a way that was not appropriate for a boss checking out his one hardworking employee.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “So here's the scoop. When I'm making love, I
do
only wear my glasses. And sometimes I even take those off.”

She winked at him, put back on her Diane von Furstenberg glasses, and walked away from the table. McCall smiled, but the news about Brahms's wife had disturbed him.

He took out the envelope with the flash drive in it.

He knew this would disturb him even more.

*   *   *

He'd walked into her apartment building while good old doorman Harry was on one of his frequent breaks. He'd taken the stairs up to the fourth floor and was standing outside apartment 4G. He tried the door. Locked, of course. He set down his heavy backpack and removed a set of thin steel pincers from his jacket pocket. It took him seconds to pick the lock. That wasn't the hard part. But like a lot of New Yorkers, Carlson suspected she'd have at least one bolt across the door from the inside.

She had two.

That was fine. That's why he was carrying the backpack.

He unzipped the top and took out a heavy industrial magnet. He laid it against the door just above the lock. Moved it across the door. Nothing happened. He tried it higher up and found the first bolt. Slowly he pulled the industrial magnet across the door. Inside, he heard the bolt moving and sliding across. It clunked into place. He froze and waited for a moment. Heard nothing. He brought the industrial magnet down about two inches, then four inches, then it vibrated a little. He'd found a second bolt. He did the same maneuver, carefully sliding the magnet across the outside of the door, moving the bolt on the inside with it, until it clanged into place.

He put the industrial magnet back into the backpack, zipped it up, and heaved it up onto his shoulders again. He stopped to listen. Still heard nothing.

Carlson opened the door to Karen Armstrong's apartment and stepped into her hallway and closed the door behind him.

 

CHAPTER 36

Carlson liked the way she had decorated her apartment. Cream-colored sofa and chairs, bleached pine bookcases jammed with paperbacks, lots of glass and ceramic elephants: a collector. There were modern paintings on the walls, bright chaotic colors. There were framed photographs everywhere, on the bookshelves, on the glass tables, on a piano. Mostly of Karen at home, he guessed. It was a beautiful house on a river, big front lawn, wraparound porch, just the kind of idyllic setting he'd imagined the bitch would come from.

There was an open door at one end of the living room. Presumably to her bedroom. He could hear the faint thrumming of a shower running. He was a little disappointed. He liked to make them strip for him. She would already be naked, unless she hadn't undressed yet, but in his experience young women didn't turn the shower on until the last minute. Water conservation. Probably only took a few seconds to get hot.

Carlson set the backpack beside one of the glass tables nearest the front door. He unzipped one of the compartments in the front and took out the knife. It was a KIYA Deba Honkasumi Japanese chef knife, Yasuki steel, 180 mm blade. It had a pale wood handle and a black enamel wrap before the blade. It could cut through a hunk of sirloin steak like it was butter. It would slice through a human being's cheek down to the bone in a second.

He walked silently through the living room to the open doorway. He picked up one of the small glass elephants from a bookshelf, about four inches high, and dropped it into the pocket of his coat.

He always liked to take a souvenir.

He stepped into the bedroom. There was a burgundy quilt on the bed and clothes waiting for her on it. A soft gray blouse with small pearl buttons, dark blue jeans she would have to squirm to get into, a black lacy bra and panties and wraparound white sandals on the floor. Where was she going at this hour? Out to dinner? It was almost ten-thirty! What happened to eating dinner at civilized times, like 8:00
P.M
?

There was a bureau, and a rocking chair with a red throw cushion on it, piled up with discarded clothes. There were three paintings on the walls, all of them Picasso prints, their names etched in gold script on plaques beneath two of them. One was
Woman in a Hat with Pompoms and a Printed Blouse
. Another was
Picasso Presley
. There was no title for the Picasso over Karen's bed, but it was of a naked girl washing herself from a jug of water in a small round kiddie's pool in a room with a blue bed, blue walls, and she herself was tinged blue. Weird, but not unattractive.

What jumped out at him immediately was an old Smith & Wesson pistol on the bedside table. He pulled out the ammo clip, emptied it, and slid it back in again. Then he set the gun back down on the table.

The sound of the shower was louder. The door to the bathroom was ajar. Steam curled through the doorway. From his position in the middle of the bedroom, Carlson could see some blue tile and the edge of a toilet. He walked silently toward the bathroom. His breath was coming a little faster now. The excitement always built this way. He was about to step around and look through the ajar bathroom door. He had thought of what her body would look like so many times. He wondered if she'd be facing him or have her back to him? If she was facing him, he would have to move in on her immediately. It was always better if they were facing away. He'd have a moment to savor her, check out her ass, the slope of her back. He wondered if she had any hidden tattoos. One of the women he'd raped looked so demure when dressed, white shirt, wool skirt, sensible shoes, like a classic librarian in some old Jimmy Stewart movie, but when he'd made her strip, and turn around, there'd been a snake tat that started on her lower back and then wrapped itself around her ass.

Never judge a book by the cover.

He stepped to one side of the bathroom door. He could see part of the shower. The shower door was open. A bonus. He hated his first look of their figures to be distorted through glass. But his view was being cut off. He raised his foot and gently nudged the bathroom door open all the way.

He had a clear view of her.

Karen had her back to him in the shower. She was washing shampoo out of her blond hair. He wondered if she was a real blond. She'd have to turn around for him to discover that. His bet was real blond. Her ass was dynamite, like he knew it would be. And she
did
have a tattoo: a lacy blue butterfly with black edges on the wings on one of the cheeks of her ass. Her legs were long and much better looking outside of the short skirts.

She was not aware of him at all. Didn't even have the slightest twinge of danger. He could have leaned against the doorway, made himself at home, and watched her soaping herself for another few minutes. Until she turned around and saw him. Maybe that's what he'd do. He didn't want to rush this. Let her rinse and soap again and then turn and see him.